Adventures and not so exciting times in the life of Kole Hicks

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My EverQuest Story…

I believe it was early 2000, and having failed to find enough friends interested in playing D&D, I went searching for a game that wouldn’t have the same issue. In rolled EverQuest…

One of the most memorable moments & my favorite story from EQ was in fact my very first experience with the game. It took a while to install the game on my computer and after finally connecting I was able to make my first character… “Sezrial” the Wood Elf Ranger on the Zebuxoruk server. After pressing the button to enter “Sezrial” into the world of EQ & waiting on the “Loading” screen for a while, I finally “awoke” to a pure black screen. I was absolutely confused… did my computer crash? Is this a bug?

Then I heard the background ambience of Greater Faydark… the “bone chattering” of a skeleton, grunt of an orc pawn, buzz of a giant bee… all of which I of course couldn’t see because it was night time! I was too scared to move my character, so I slowly increased the brightness on my monitor until I could at least partially make out the shapes of objects in front of me. My 13 year old self had never experienced this amount of immersion in a game before, so I was searching for any kind of “hint” on what to do and feel. After finally mustering the courage to move “Sezrial” around, I found that thing to hold on to…

It started softly with angelic arpeggios on a harp and as I looked up I caught a glimpse of a city in the trees… My city, Sezrial’s home, Kelethin.

I loved all of the music from EQ, but especially this song/moment as it was a pivotal point that ultimately led to my current career in Game Audio. In fact, just this last December over the Holidays I arranged my version of the “Kelethin” theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ChgBSZuio

Who knows, I may make it a yearly thing. All of the good times I had and many, many… many… frustrations are fondly remembered now. Thanks EQ!